Sunday, September 29, 2013

Below I will sketch two aspects of the IPCC's work which I find troubling. One relates to some interesting discussions on the thread The coming crisis of climate science which are worth pursuing in light of the two recent IPCC documents (Press release and Headlines document) reprinted here on Klimazwiebel. The other relates to the way the issue is presented by the IPCC.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

STOCKHOLM,
27 September - Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident in
most regions of the globe, a new assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) concludes. It is extremely likely that human influence
has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
The evidence for this has grown, thanks to more and better observations, an
improved understanding of the climate system response and improved climate models.

Warming of the climate
system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are
unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed,
the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the
concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased. Each of the last three
decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding
decade since 1850. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest
30-year period of the last 1400 years.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

“Popular Science” is completely ending comments because they were determned to be counterproductive to the mission of the magazine: “A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.”

How does this reconcile with the suggestions that the blogosphere is a means to make science more democratic? Is the blogosphere as a means of (popular - and sometimes not so popular) scientific discussion merely a transitory 'post-normal' misconception?

Thursday, September 19, 2013

With the fifth assessment report soon to be
released by the IPCC the pre-publication buzz is well underway. A while ago unauthorised
drafts circulated in the blogosphere and now the official leaks have found
their way into news editing rooms. A central question picked up by most
commentators is the ‘pause in global warming’, the ‘stagnation’, or the ‘hiatus’.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

It seems that there is renewed interest in the surveys of Dennis Bray (and myself as junior partner) of climate scientists. Four of such surveys have been done. Results of three of these are published; a fourth one, run in early 2013, is presently evaluated. We give here the references to reports and analyses.

We are not lacking hypothesis about the recent
hiatus - or stagnation- in the global mean temperature: the ocean is
taking up more heat, stratospheric water vapour has decreased, the
sun has recently weakened and volcanic activity has also gathered a
quicker clip. A preliminary look at the structure of the stagnation
may, or may not, offer some clues about how likely which of these
hypothesis, or which combination, may end up being the correct one.

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